In 1994 John Roney visited Cerro Juanaqueña, a supposed Casas Grandes site in northwest Chihuahua. The visit became a classic example of how chance discoveries can upend established archaeological notions. It also shows what a limited role chance can play. Roney's knowledge and experience primed him to suspect what others might have overlooked: Cerro Juanaqueña was a cerro de trincheras (artificially terraced hill) that predated the Casas Grandes culture.
What happened next shows what it takes to transform a chance discovery into a lasting contribution. Roney and Robert Hard assembled the research team needed to document the site, came up with funding, found other sites like Cerro Juanaqueña, and spent years digging and analyzing. A quarter-century after that fateful first visit, Hard and Roney have produced a new keystone of the region's archaeological literature.
The best way to begin this volume is to examine its color plates—oblique aerial views of Cerro Juanaqueña and its sister sites—by the incomparable Adriel Heisey. For readers who have not tromped that countryside, impressions gained from the images will serve as a useful baseline. Hard, Roney, and the University of Utah Press are to be commended for including these images. The rest of the book systematically constructs the case for Cerro Juanaqueña's importance, including a healthy dose of intellectual self-awareness. Raw data are provided in 44 online appendices.
Unless otherwise noted, chapters were written by Hard and Roney. After an introductory chapter and one on the natural setting, the authors describe Cerro Juanaqueña, a 140 m tall hill next to the Rio Casas Grandes. The archaeological remains include 8 km of terraces, 99 rock rings, other features, and an assemblage rich in flaked and ground stone but lacking pottery. The site was occupied during the Late Archaic/Early Agricultural period and represents a fortified village that relied on maize.
The next two chapters describe 13 similar sites in northwest Chihuahua and provide radiocarbon dates. Clearly, Cerro Juanaqueña was not a fluke but part of a regional pattern. All 14 of the sites are next to valley bottoms eminently suited to farming (they are farmed today). At Cerro Juanaqueña, the largest of the sites, the main occupation took place between 1300 and 1100 BC; a minor reoccupation took place between 400 BC and 1 AD. Four radiocarbon dates from two other terraced hills suggest that they were contemporary with the main occupation at Cerro Juanaqueña.
The chapter titled “Overview of Material Culture” will become a standard reference. Happily, projectile points and other key flaked stone are illustrated at 1:1 scale. The analysis of manos and metates appears much later in the book, as does the detailed analysis of the flaked stone (the latter by Bradley Vierra). Readers will easily survive the disconnect, and the later chapters are models of what a stone tool analysis should be. Yet the book would have been strengthened by a single integrated presentation of each type of stone technology.
Karen Adams and Kevin Hanselka describe plant remains. Maize was common at Cerro Juanaqueña; it was also present at two other hill sites (of three sampled) and at a preceramic site buried in the local floodplain. Field weeds such as chenopods were also consumed. A separate analysis of the amaranth and chenopod seeds, by Gayle Fritz, makes a strong case that amaranth was actively cultivated.
Pollen, phytolith, starch, and stable isotope studies (by Suzanne Fish, Lisa Lavold, Linda Scott Cummings, and Ann Katzenberg, respectively, and synthesized by Hard and Roney) provide additional subsistence information but serve mainly to characterize the local biotic communities of three millennia ago. The analysis of faunal remains (by Kari Schmidt) proves more directly informative. The primary source of animal protein was rabbits, with only a minor reliance on other species. Taken as a whole, the analyses support Hard's and Roney's arguments, made elsewhere in the volume, that occupation of Cerro Juanaqueña was year-round.
Given the evidence for farming and given the existence of at least one buried floodplain site, Lee Nordt's discussion of floodplain geomorphology is a valuable addition. During the main occupation of Cerro Juanaqueña, the local floodplain was wide and stable. An episode of erosion coincided with the end of the main occupation.
A chapter titled “Warfare and Society” and the concluding chapter answer the most obvious questions: Why were people living on hills, and why so early? Whatever else they were, the region's hill sites appear to have been defensive—so warfare must have been a problem. In addition, these sites were part of a regional pattern, the San Pedro complex, better known from studies in southern Arizona: villages built well before the Ceramic period that had completely bought into farming.
I was impressed by this volume and by the research behind it. Early Farming and Warfare belongs on the shelves of every archaeologist interested in the region's early agricultural communities and is a must-read for anyone interested in Northwest Mexican archaeology in general.
